Hreflang usage for language & country x only language
-
Hi guys,
I´m dealing with a website of a client where hreflang tags are implemented as follows:
As you can see the hreflang tags reference language & countrycode as well as only the languagecode with the same URL (for french: website/fr/ihr-besuch/online-tickets" hreflang="fr-fr" as well as hreflang="fr" href="https://www.website/fr/ihr-besuch/online-tickets").
Is this a problem and should be corrected so that either language & countrycode is referenced or only languagecode?
Thanks in advance!
-
HI,
I don't know if it would make a huge difference in how google will understand the site but it is not a 'normal' setup as per documentation: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
If the site does not have different regional variation pages of english (UK vs USA for example) then there is no need to double up hreflang markup with regional notation. You just need the hreflang='en' and it is good for all english language searches regardless of location. Same goes for all the languages.
Personally I would remove the extra regional tags to avoid confusion and keep things as simple as possible.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Several hreflang links pointing to same URL
Hi, Does anyone know whether hreflang links can be used using the following markup? I can't seem to find any info on this particular usage, but it "feels" incorrect to me. (duplicate content issues)
Technical SEO | | dimitrihuyghe
Our development team tells me this is the way the markup should be, since languages are initially set using a cookie and all different languages are using the same URL. Thanks! <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.littlethingz.be</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">nl</a>"/><link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.littlethingz.be</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">x-default</a>"/><link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.littlethingz.be</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">fr</a>"/><link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.littlethingz.be</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>"/><link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.littlethingz.be</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">de</a>"/>0 -
SEO URLs: 1\. URLs in my language (Greek, Greeklish or English)? 2\. Αt the end it is good to put -> .html? What is the best way to get great ranking?
Hello all, I must put URLs in my language Greek, Greeklish or in English? And at the end of url it is good to put -> .html? For exampe www.test.com/test/test-test.html ? What is the best way to get great ranking? I am a new digital marketing manager and its my first time who works with a programmer who doesn't know. I need to know as soon as possible, because they want to be "on air" tomorrow! Thank you very much for your help! Regards, Marios
Technical SEO | | marioskal0 -
HREFLANG No Return Tag Error
Keep getting WMT no return tag error. Also got an email today on this issue. Here are a couple pages showing up in the error report: Originating URL: /hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ Alternate URL: /jp/hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ Here are the hreflang tags for each page: /hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ /jp/hawaii/kauai-real-estate/ The only thing I can see is the hreflang= is at the end of the snippet but doesn't seem like that would matter. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)
Hi I take it if theres a staging or development area on a subdomain for a site, who's content is hence usually duplicate then this should not be indexable i.e. (no-indexed & nofollowed in metarobots) ? In order to prevent dupe content probs as well as non project related people seeing work in progress or finding accidentally in search engine listings ? Also if theres no such info in meta robots is there any other way it may have been made non-indexable, or at least dupe content prob removed by canonicalising the page to the equivalent page on the live site ? In the case in question i am finding it listed in serps when i search for the staging/dev area url, so i presume this needs urgent attention ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ZAG1 -
301 redirects & merging two sites into one
We have a client that has two sites that rank well for different searches in their market. The main pages ranking are things like advice articles and news pieces. For various reasons, they just want one site. I believe they need to duplicate the content from the outgoing site and place it on the main site, with a 301 redirect from each old page to each new one. What happens when they eventually want to redirect the entire domain? Would these smaller, internal redirects become obsolete, therefore removing any link value they once had? I am not sure how this works or if there is a best practice way to do this. Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | Gmorgan0 -
On-Page Report Card & Rel Canonical
Hello, I ran one of our pages through the On-Page Report Card. Among the results we are getting a lower grade due to the following "critical factor" : Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Explanation If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. This is for an e-commerce site, and the canonical links are inserted automatically by the cart software. The cart is also creating the canonical url as a relative link, not an absolute URL. In this particular case it's a self-referential link. I've read a ton on this and it seems that this should be okay (I also read that Bing might have an issue with this). Is this really an issue? If so, what is the best practice to pass this critical factor? Thanks, Paul
Technical SEO | | rwilson-seo0 -
Relocating to a C-level domain: Google Newsmaps & pagejuice
A client wants to relocate the majority of his niche news site, www.example.com, into a c-level domain on the same domain (news.example.com). Right now, almost all the articles are populating in Google News and generating traffic, thanks to the site's age, content and its newsmap. With the relocation, 80% of the files pulled into Google News, will now be news.example.com/tech/article-sample, as opposed to how they have been historically, www.example.com/tech/article-sample. Will that break Google News auto submission process, hurt their google news positioning, and require them to reapply for consideration? Secondly, a good chunk of landing pages (30+) and articles (3-4k) will be relocated to the new news.example.com domain. Everything after the .com/ will of course remain the same, but the c-level will be new so essentially, a new URL. I know that redirecting will lose some pagejuice, but since its a c-level, its going to be basically like moving the urls to a brand new domain?
Technical SEO | | EricPacifico0